


Three Points (Where Two Lines Meet)

by Atlas_M_33



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Galaxy Garrison, Iverson is a dick, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Keith's year in the desert, M/M, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Sheith Secret Santa 2017, Shiro (Voltron) Has a Clone, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, the desert shack makes a few appearances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 15:54:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13321527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlas_M_33/pseuds/Atlas_M_33
Summary: When Keith meets Shiro his Mark burns.He won’t understand the irony of that until later.





	Three Points (Where Two Lines Meet)

**Author's Note:**

> This is officially the longest thing I've ever written, and I'm sorry it's super late but I wanted it to be the best it could be.
> 
> My Sheith Secret Santa Prompt was: Soulmarks, angst with a happy ending. I hope this is what you had in mind, it was a blast to work on!

 

 

 

When Keith comes to the Garrison, it’s with a jacket that belonged to his dad, a knife that belonged to his mom, and words on his wrist that are the only thing he truly owns.  
  
~~~  
  
On his first day as a cadet he flies a sim run that earns him three things:  
a scholarship, a lot of enemies among the other cadets, and the top fighter pilot spot in his year.  
  
He grins as he reads his name at the top of the list.  
  
His Mark burns.  
  
~~~  
  
Keith’s 27th day as a fighter pilot is exactly like every other day he has spent as a fighter pilot. Until it isn’t.  
  
Keith’s 27th day as a fighter pilot is the most important day of his life, because that’s the day that some of the seniors come to give them tips.  
  
Keith’s 27th day as a fighter pilot is the day he meets Shiro.  
  
~~~  
  
_(“Papa, why’s there writing on my arm?”_ _  
__  
__Papa looks down at him smiling and reaches out to ruffle his hair._ _  
__  
__“One day buddy, someone real important is gonna day those words to you, and you’re gonna say theirs. When that happens you have to promise to do something for me, Keithy. Okay?”_ _  
__  
__“Okay Papa! What is it?”_ _  
__  
__Papa reaches down and scoops him up, Keith’s delighted giggles echoing around the small shack._ _  
__  
__“Never let them go buddy.”)_ _  
_  
~~~  
  
“Those were some fancy maneuvers you pulled there.”  
  
“Thanks, but I’m pretty sure you have me beat.”  
  
Their wrists start burning as soon as Keith finishes speaking, and as the words on his wrist finish flooding with purple and the last few red stars appear on his skin, Keith looks up into the eyes of his soulmate.  
  
It’s the first time since his dad left that Keith thinks that, maybe, he could have a home again.  
  
“I’m Shiro.” His soulmate’s hand is warm and slightly calloused, with long fingers that wrap all the way around his.    
  
“Keith.”  
  
~~~  
  
Months later, sitting on the beat up couch in his Papa’s old shack, Shiro tells Keith that he had known as soon as Keith walked into the room.  
  
Keith rolls his eyes, but doesn’t move from where he’s curled up at Shiro’s side.  
  
~~~  
  
_(“Keith.”_ _  
__  
__“Yeah babe?”_ _  
__  
__“I got the mission.”)_ _  
_  
~~~  
  
_(“You better come back, you hear me?”_ _  
__  
__“I’ll always come back to you, flyboy.”_ _  
__  
__Sap.”)_ _  
_  
~~~  
  
Keith has been called out of class periodically since the Kerberos mission launched, so he has no reason to find anything strange about it happening again today.  
  
Except the ship arrived at Kerberos yesterday, and Keith wasn’t supposed to get another message from Shiro until tomorrow, when the comms satellite would finally be up and running.    
  
All of this registers to Keith almost as soon as he exits the room, and the two officers waiting for him are just one more red flag. Then they walk him to Iverson’s office instead of mission control, and Keith’s whole world comes crumbling down.  
  
~~~  
  
_(“Last night we lost contact with the Kerberos mission.”)_ _  
_  
~~~  
  
The therapist assigned to him by the Garrison looks exactly like the ones on TV. Pencil skirt, glasses, notepad. She’s starting to get impatient with him. Keith can see it in her eyes. “I think it’s time we discuss the death of your soulmate.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Keith, you can’t dance around this anymore. You need to accept-“  
  
“He’s not dead.”  
  
“What makes you so sure? Contact with the mission was lost months ago.”  
  
Keith wraps his hand around his wrist, where his Mark has been throbbing since mission failure. “I just know.”  
  
~~~  
  
_(“He’s unstable.”_ _  
__  
__“He’s still the best pilot we have.”_ _  
__  
__“He is. But he’s never going to work for you now. Not only did you declare his soulmate dead, you missed one crucial factor.”_ _  
__  
__“And what would that be?”_ _  
__  
__“His Mark hasn’t faded.”_ _  
__  
__“…We’ll have to take care of that.”)_ _  
_  
~~~  
  
_(“Kogane!”_ _  
__  
__“Yes sir?”_ _  
__  
__“Iverson wants to see you in his office.”_ _  
__  
__“Yes sir.”)_ _  
_  
~~~  
  
When Keith wakes up, the dull throbbing in his arm has been replaced with a sharp and searing pain that cuts him to the bone. It hurts so much that when he looks down, there’s a moment of relief that he still even has an arm.  
  
Half of which is wrapped up in a thick bandage.  
  
Keith’s hands are shaking so badly that it takes him three tries to remove the gauze around his wrist.  
  
Then he sees what’s underneath it.    
  
~~~  
  
When Keith finally drags himself out of the shitty motel room they dumped him in he’s greeted by his bike, parked right outside the door. There’s a box of his belongings tied on the back and taped to its lid is the letter officially banning him from campus. He wads up the letter and tosses it over his shoulder before straddling the bike in front of the box.  
  
There’s only one place he can think of to go, and it’s fitting that it’s the one place left in this desert that still connects him to Shiro.  
  
He starts the bike.  
  
He doesn’t look back.  
  
~~~  
  
When Keith leaves the memory of the Garrison behind he does it wrapped up in a jacket that he finally fits in, with a knife he’s taught himself how to fight with strapped to his belt. Wrapped around his wrist under sloppily reapplied bandages is a mangled burn scar.  
  
It’s still the only thing he truly counts as his.  
  
~~~  
  
It takes Keith two weeks to wrestle the shack back into a habitable state after months of neglect and summer dust storms.  
  
The entire time he handles Shiro’s belongings only long enough to put them away in the back of the closet where he doesn’t have to look at them.  
  
~~~  
  
There’s an empty feeling in the center of his chest where his connection to Shiro used to sit.  
  
Keith has his first panic attack in years when he realizes he can’t remember what the bond used to feel like.  
  
~~~  
  
He barely leaves the shack during the day, and at night he only leaves to watch the stars from the top of the nearest plateau.    
  
It’s frighteningly easy to slip back into the habit of being alone, and Keith starts to wonder if maybe he always has been. If maybe Shiro was just a hallucination brought on by one too many hits to the head during a back alley fistfight. The scar where his Mark used to be itches underneath the compression brace that’s wrapped around his arm, hiding the burn from view.  
  
Keith ignores it, as he does everything else, and keeps his eyes on the stars.  
  
~~~  
  
Sometimes he thinks about just dropping himself off of the edge one of the nearby canyons and letting it be over.  
  
He always chickens out at the last minute.  
  
~~~  
  
The first time Keith feels the pulsing from the desert is the night that would have been Shiro’s birthday, even if he didn’t technically have one this year. Keith is drunk off of the shitty moonshine they sell in the nearest town, standing on the edge of a cliff and back to thinking about stepping off when a shockwave knocks him on his ass. He lays on his back in the dirt, blinking up at the sky as a whisper of a voice washes over him.  
  
_Come find me._  
  
Keith lays there and cries up at the stars for an hour.  
  
It was probably just his drunken brain’s last bid at self preservation, but for that split second he could have sworn he’d heard Shiro’s voice calling to him from the desert.  
  
~~~  
  
When Keith gets back to the shack in the morning, all the sensors that have been picking up nothing but dead air are beeping hysterically, detecting some energy signature from out in the desert.  
  
He picks up the only handheld in the pile, grabs enough supplies for an all day excursion, and then jumps on his hover bike.  
  
Keith follows the signal till the sun sets.  
  
That’s when he finds the first cave.  
  
~~~  
  
Keith buries himself in research, looking for anything he can find on the lions etched into the cave walls.  
  
The first time he touches one of the carvings his fingertips come away feeling singed and his skin crawls for hours.  
  
Keith doesn’t touch any of the markings on the walls after that.  
  
The hum in the back of his head says these ones aren’t meant for him.  
  
~~~  
  
The day of the event that his research has been predicting  arrives like any other day, except for one thing. The entire desert is buzzing. There’s a trilling in the back of Keith’s throat, and a pull like a rope tied around his sternum that’s dragging him towards the area immediately around the Garrison.  
  
He brings the bombs on a whim.  
  
~~~  
  
Breaking into the Garrison quarantine pod? That alone makes the trip worth it.  
  
Kicking Iverson in the face to see what they found? Icing on the cake.  
  
Saving Shiro? That just about makes up for the entire damn year he spent alone.    
  
~~~  
  
Keith flies across the desert with one soul mate and three strangers on the back of his bike, and he’s never been more thankful for the way the wind whips in his face, drying the tears that leak from his eyes almost as soon as they appear.  
  
In the back of his head the voice from the desert sings triumphantly alongside the bond in his chest.  
  
~~~  
  
Later, when they finally find the blue lion, Keith feels her brush over his mind as they step into her cockpit for the first time. There’s a sound that no longer echos Shiro’s voice and then Blue’s slipsilver mind, cool water and crackling ice, wraps around him purring. It stops before Lance can notice, but Keith doesn’t forget.  
  
Blue was, after all, the only one he had out in that desert for a year.  
  
~~~  
  
Keith’s at the edge of the solar system in an alien lion that wants to take him through a magic portal to who knows where.  
  
He doesn’t spare a thought for not going, because Shiro is here and Keith doesn’t think he could ever stand to let him go again.  
  
~~~  
  
It takes falling into the vast expanse of space for Keith to finally feel the click in the back of his mind that the others had talked about. It’s a fragile connection floating amongst his thoughts, pulling itself up into the forefront of his consciousness and demanding his attention. Like Blue, but Not.  
  
Like Blue, but Different.  
  
Moments later when Red scoops him up with possessive growl Keith doesn’t even try to stop the feral grin spreading across his face.  
  
~~~  
  
Forming Voltron becomes a regular occurrence.  
  
Shiro still hasn’t said anything.  
  
The bond hums quietly, a constant and dull ache in his chest.  
  
It’s enough.  
  
~~~  
  
Training is great, but Keith’s favorite part of the day is after dinner, when they all gather in the common room to do their own things in each other’s company.  
  
Sometimes, with the castle as empty as it is, Keith’s forgets that he’s not back in the desert.  
  
~~~  
  
One night, they end up on the topic of soulmates, because Keith’s life will always revolve around his Mark.  
  
Even if he no longer has it.  
  
He’s sharpening his knife on the end of the couch, not engaging in conversation but still savoring the fact that there are other people here with him. So, of course, that’s when Lance’s sleeve rides up enough for Allura to see the words scrawled across his arm.  
  
“What is that?” It only takes a moment for Lance to realize what she’s looking at, and his eyes light up.  
  
“That’s my Mark! They’re the first words my soul mate will say to me. It’s black now because I haven’t met them yet, but when I do the Colors will come in so that I know it’s really them.” Lance is proudly brandishing his wrist for Allura to see, and she leans in to look closer.  
  
“We had stories of such things, on Altea.” Allura pauses, like she always does when she mentions her planet. “Stories of people whose quintessence sang for each other.”  
  
Coran butts his head in, leaning over the others to insert himself into the conversation. “What do you mean by colors?”  
  
“It’s like… um. I don’t know how to describe them. They’re just… the Colors.”  
  
“I have Colors.”  
  
Keith’s world sputters to a stop, and he knows what’s coming next, even before Shiro starts rolling up his sleeve. He always loved to show off their words, proud of them even before Keith made a name for himself breaking records.  
  
But Keith can’t do that anymore, so instead he waits for everyone’s focus to fall on Shiro’s left arm, and he slips out the door silently.  
  
Keith makes sure not to look at Shiro’s Mark. He doesn’t think he’d be able to handle that.  
  
~~~  
  
“I have Colors.”  
  
It slips out before Shiro can stop it, and suddenly all eyes are on him. He pushes up his left sleeve, holding out his arm for them to see. Lance, Hunk and Allura lean in, trying to get a better look. Pidge just turns to him, face pale. “You’ve met your soulmate? When? Who is it?”  
  
That makes him pause. “You don’t know?”  
  
Pidge gazes up at him. “Should I?” Hunk and Lance are listening now, attention no longer fixed on his Mark with its crimson writing and purple stars.  
  
“Did the Garrison not say anything? Not even at my funeral?” Another thought occurs to him suddenly. “Wait. Who did they present the flag to at my funeral?”  
  
Lance and Hunk shrug, and yeah, they didn’t really have any reason to be paying attention. But Pidge is biting her bottom lip the way she does when something is bothering her.  
“Pidge?”  
  
“No one. Mom got Dad’s, and they gave me Matt’s, but they framed yours and put it in the case in the commons with the other memorials.” Pidge looks over to Lance and Hunk, who finally seem to understand what’s wrong.  
  
“But if you have a soulmate why didn’t they get it?” Hunk’s question is tentative, like he’s afraid to ask.  
  
Shiro grits his teeth and thinks back to how many people he’d had to fight just to be able to list Keith, another cadet, as his next of kin. “That’s what I’d like to know.”  
  
He turns to ask Keith just in time to watch the door close behind him.  
  
~~~  
  
Lying in bed later, Shiro realizes he  hasn’t seen Keith’s Mark at all since he got back.  
  
~~~  
  
Across the hall, Keith stares at his mutilated wrist and remembers a time before lions and caves and mission failures, when he had been whole and happy for the first time in his life.  
  
He falls asleep with silent tears running down his face.  
  
~~~  
  
“Keith! You can’t keep avoiding me like this! Just tell me what’s wrong!”  
  
Shiro can’t handle this anymore, concern grinding him past what even he can tolerate. He’s been trying to talking to Keith for the past four days, but everytime he thinks he’s finally managed to corner him something else comes up.  
  
He’ll be damned if Keith dodges him again.  
  
~~~  
  
Keith is in such a rush to get away, he doesn’t even notice that he’s run himself into a dead end until it’s too late. And then, when he turns to try and dodge past Shiro, he’s too slow.  Keith doesn’t even see Shiro’s hand coming until it’s already wrapped around his forearm.  
  
“Please Keith. I just want to know what’s wrong.” Shiro’s voice is soft and worried and Keith can’t even bring himself to look him in the eye. He’s too busy looking down at his arm. Shiro’s palm is resting over his mark, exactly the way he always used to cradle it in his grasp. When they watched the stars, deep in the desert on the roof of that lion’s-damned shack. When they would stumble out of the simulator, high off adrenaline and still stuck in the feedback loop they always fell into when they flew together.  
  
Like he did the day he climbed into that rocket and left Keith alone on a planet that never wanted him.  
  
Keith freezes.  
  
Then he pulls his arm from Shiro’s grip, shoves his sleeve up to his elbow and yanks off the elastic cuff he’s wearing.  
  
He holds his arm back out, showing Shiro the mottled strip of ugly scar tissue, a bar two inches tall and spanning the width of his inner forearm.  
  
Then he braces himself for the fallout.  
  
~~~  
  
_(A rumble of concern rushing through his head, not a worded question, but the sensation of one._ _  
__  
__“I’m fine Red. I just… I miss Shiro.”_ _  
__  
__The concern turns to confusion, and a prodding that Keith can feel means “He’s right there.”_ _  
__  
__“I know he is. But I miss the way we were before. And now…” He looks down at his wrist, unwrapped because here, in Red’s cockpit, he feels safe enough to bare the most vulnerable part of himself._ _  
__  
__“Now we can’t ever go back. The Garrison made sure of that.”)_ _  
_  
~~~  
  
Instead of recoiling the way Keith expected him to, Shiro reaches out and takes Keith’s wrist in his hand, cradling it in his palm and running his thumb over the burn scar.  
  
“What happened.” It’s clipped and angry, and Keith knows it’s because Shiro cherished their Marks just as much as Keith always has.  “Did you do this to yours-“  
  
“Fuck you Shirogane.” It slips out, bitter and angry because that’s the last thing he expected. Keith yanks his arm away, and he can feel the tears that are threatening to roll down his face. “You and that Mark were everything I had.”  
  
Keith pulls back even further, setting his back against the wall and putting as much distance as he can between himself and Shiro because if he doesn’t he’s going to end up punching him in the face for that question. “No, I didn’t. You want to know what happened? The Galaxy fucking Garrison. After they announced mission failure Iverson assigned me a therapist.”  
  
It looks like Shiro is winding up to cut in, so Keith pushes on without pause, even though all he really wants to do is sit down finally let himself mourn his Mark, all these months later. “She must have found out that my Mark hadn’t faded somehow, because I got called to Iverson’s office.”  
  
Keith stops, let’s out the laugh that’s been pushing at the back of his throat. The look on Shiro’s face says that it must have sounded even worse then it felt. “I don’t even know if I made it there or if they got me in the hallway. The next thing I remember is waking up in a motel room two towns over with my arm wrapped up and my Mark fucking burned off my body.”  
  
Keith’s tired in a way he hasn’t been in a long time. Nerves frayed, stomach upset and churning with anxiety. “So I went to the shack and I stayed there. I stayed there by myself for a year. And then you fell out of the sky.” Keith looks at the floor, refusing to see the expression on Shiro’s face when he realizes just how broken Keith is now.  
  
Instead he gets pulled into strong arms, and Shiro’s curling around him the way he always used to. “I thought you didn’t want me anymore.”  
  
“What? Of course I want you!” Keith can’t believe Shiro would even entertain the thought that Keith didn’t- “I’ll always want you Shiro, you’re mine.”  
  
Then Shiro pulls back, cradles his face in mismatched hands and looks at Keith like he hasn’t since a year and a lifetime ago. “And you’re mine. And nothing will ever change that.”  
  
~~~  
  
When Keith wakes up it takes him a moment to latch onto the sound that had disturbed him, and another few seconds after that to identify the noise as muffled crying. After that he’s awake almost instantly, and already looking for Shiro.  
  
Keith finds him right away, sitting on the edge of the bed with Keith’s right arm in his lap. Shiro’s dragging robotic fingers over the scar so gently that Keith’s damaged nerves barely detect their presence. A tear splashes onto Keith’s wrist, and he finally finds his voice. “Shiro? What’s wrong?”  
  
Shiro jerks, not having realized that Keith was awake. “Keith!” He turns his head away, obviously wiping away the tears running down his face. “Nothing’s wrong baby. Go back to sleep.”  
  
Shiro’s pet name for him, cherished for so long and missed for even longer, very nearly succeeds in distracting Keith from Shiro’s emotional turmoil, which was probably what Shiro had been hoping for. “Shiro.” His tone leaves no room for argument, but Shiro still doesn’t look at him. “Shiro. Look at me.” He does, and Keith blinks in shock.  
  
Shiro’s a mess.  
  
His eyes are puffy and red, and he has tear tracks staining both his cheeks. Keith reaches with his left hand, the one not currently clutched between both of Shiro’s, and lays it across the back of Shiro’s neck, pulling him in to lean their foreheads together. “What’s wrong?”  
  
They stay like that, foreheads pressed together, Shiro’s eyes closed and Keith’s trained on Shiro, for minutes that seem to stretch into eternity as Shiro catches his breath enough to speak. When he does, his voice grates terribly. “I’m going to kill him.”  
  
Keith jerks, and Shiro opens eyes that are full of furious promise. He raises his own left hand, flesh and blood and bone and marked with Keith’s first words to him, laying it over the hand that Keith has moved to his cheek. “When we get back to Earth, I’m going to find Iverson and I’m going to make him regret every single thing he did to hurt you.”  
  
Keith doesn’t know how to respond to that, to this new Shiro that’s so much like the one he lost, but also so much angrier. So he doesn’t.  
  
Instead Keith pulls Shiro closer, lets him cry into his shirt as he runs his fingers through close cropped hair.  
  
~~~  
  
They’re still awake when the alarm next to Shiro’s bed goes off, and even though they’re both exhausted from a lack of sleep and an abundance of tears, the air between them feels right again. It fells settled.  
  
It feels like healing.  
  
~~~  
  
Things are going well, and they have a plan to finally end Zarkon.  
  
Shiro’s eyes meet his, and for once Keith feels like everything will be alright.  
  
~~~  
  
_(“Shiro!”_ _  
__  
__The cockpit is empty._ _  
__  
__“He’s gone.”)_  
  
~~~  
  
Shiro goes missing again.  
  
Keith’s arm aches like it hasn’t since his Mark was burned off.  
  
~~~  
  
_(“There’s nothing here.”_ _  
__  
__“I’m sorry Keith.”)_ _  
_  
~~~  
  
“We need to find a new Paladin for the Black Lion.”  
  
Keith knows Allura pities him, but she isn’t human. She can’t possibly hope to understand what Shiro was to him, even if he did explain.  
  
The others might, but Shiro never told them and he doesn’t have a mark to prove it, so he stays quiet and pretends he can’t feel himself being torn apart at the seams all over again.  
  
~~~  
  
One at a time, the other Paladins and Allura climb into the Black Lion, trying to awaken it.  
  
One at a time they are disappointed when she doesn’t even acknowledge them.  
  
~~~  
  
Keith is the only one left, and when he looks up at the Black Lion where she sprawls across the floor of the hangar he feels smaller than he ever has.  
  
Smaller even than the day he looked up at the rocket that was going to carry his soulmate into the stars and realized that he would never deserve a boy that bright.  
  
~~~  
  
“I can’t be what Shiro was.”  
  
In his head Black’s voice is so much bigger than Red’s. Her reply is a soothing balm on his anxiety, a rush of “No, I would never ask you to be”, followed by “You will always be Red, but now you are Needed”.  
  
So Keith settles into the seat of the Black Lion.  
  
In the back of his mind a final thought bursts into existence, concrete in a way the Lions rarely ever are.  
  
“We’re going to bring him home.”  
  
It’s that thought, echoed by the two of them in tandem, that lets Keith activate the Lion.  
  
~~~  
  
“You found him.”  
  
A warm rumbling purr, pride and love and longing all wrapped up together. Keith leans forward to rest his forehead against the Black Lion’s main console, and he sobs out his relief to the stars surrounding them.  
  
“You found him.”  
  
~~~  
  
_(“How many times are you gonna have to save me before this is over?”_ _  
__  
__“As many times as it takes.”)_ _  
_  
~~~  
  
Shiro is back, but he’s different.  
  
Something is off.  
  
He doesn’t come to Keith’s room after nightmares anymore. Doesn’t run his fingers through Keith’s hair after training. Doesn’t push their foreheads together after missions and just breathe.  
  
Doesn’t cradle Keith’s wrist and thumb over Keith's scar and tell him he still loves him.  
  
The others notice as well, so at least Keith knows he isn’t seeing things that aren’t present.  
  
A particularly callous remark about one of Keith’s decisions mid-battle has Lance looking at him questioningly, but Keith just shakes his head and leaves the bridge.  
  
He always knew that day would come that Shiro would realize just how worthless he is. He’s just surprised that it took this long.  
  
~~~  
  
Three days later he catches Shiro in the training room with his gloves off. His new short sleeved shirt means there’s nothing covering his arms.  
  
Shiro’s left wrist is blank.  
  
~~~  
  
_(He crawls into the seat, a shambling mess of confusion and hurt and mourning. A stray thought manifests, how Shiro hadn’t been able to pilot the Lion that had been as desperate to find him as his own soulmate had. Keith sobs, and Black curls around his mind and cries with him.)_ _  
_  
~~~  
  
“There is one entrance, and no personnel are currently on duty at this base. It was a research facility until the druids abandoned it to assist with the rebellions at the mining colonies.” Keith blinks, trying to remain focused on Allura’s words but still hyper aware of the thing in the room that’s imitating his soul mate.  
  
Suddenly though, she’s leaning in, speaking in a hushed tone so her voice doesn’t carry as she gestures behind Keith. “The two of you should take this mission. It might provide a chance for you to fall back together.” Allura’s suggestion is startling only because he didn’t expect it this soon, even if he knows the others have noticed the new rift forming between him and Shiro.  
  
He looks over his shoulder to where Not Shiro is talking to Pidge and Hunk about the software required to hack the security system.  
  
Keith, at least, knows there won’t be any falling together.  
  
“Yeah. It might.”  
  
~~~  
  
As Keith lands the Black Lion outside the prison he can feel her presence in his mind as it flickers between apprehension at the risk and approval of his actions.  
  
He waits until they’re inside to draw his sword, then he plants his feet and takes a deep breath.  
  
“You’re not Shiro.”  
  
Ahead of him Not Shiro freezes, tipping its head to the side before turning around slowly. There’s a grin on its face that’s cold and terrible and so unlike Shiro that all the residual doubts Keith had are gone in an instant. When it speaks, its voice is just as chilling. “I knew you’d be the one to figure it out. What gave me away?” It’s coming closer now, stalking towards Keith with that terrible smile on its face. “Did I not love you enough? Let me tell you a secret.” The Not Shiro is right in front of him now, and it leans in so that Keith can feel its breath on the side of his face. “He never loved you. He only put up with you because you had his Mark.”  
  
“No.” Keith has a sword to its throat, and he should use it. He should kill it where it stands for lying like that, about that, in Shiro’s voice. But Keith can’t move. He’s frozen in place with this thing whispering softly in his ear.  
  
He lets it, because he’s never been able to bring himself to hurt Shiro.  
  
“I have his memories, you know? I know how he felt. He barely tolerated you.” The thing laughs, and still Keith knows that he’d never be able to bring himself to do anything to hurt it. “He was thrilled when he found out you’d lost your Mark, because that meant he wasn’t obligated to like you anymore. Someone as unstable as you? Easy to claim that you burned it off yourself.” It’s reaching for his neck, but Keith’s still frozen in place. “He can disappear. Never even have to see you again. Face it Keith…” it leans in even further. “He’s not coming back.”  
  
Then a bright purple glow flickers into view behind Not Shiro, and before Keith can blink the thing is choking and falling in a heap to the floor.  
  
“Wrong.”  
  
It takes Keith a moment to register what he’s seeing. It’s Shiro, hair a little shaggy and armor a little scuffed, but it’s really him. Keith, full of shock and awe and pride, stumbles backwards the way he had all those months ago in the Castle, let’s his back hit the wall and let’s himself slide to the floor. He gasps out a half sob, half laugh, emotions forcing their way through a smile made of clenched teeth. “It’s good to have you back.”  
  
Shiro smiles, and his face is bloody but there’s a light in his eyes that the other Shiro never had. He stands tall and proud and grins like something feral, the shadows of the hallway turning Shiro into something wild and savage and beautiful. When he speaks, Keith is viscerally reminded of every single thing he loves about this man. “It’s good to be back.”  
  
And suddenly there’s a pain in his wrist like his arm’s on fire, and Shiro’s face twists up. He watches Shiro yank his sleeve up, and there it is. The mark that even Haggar couldn’t replicate. But it’s moving, bending into a new shape as the words change.  
  
“It’s good to have you back.” is etching itself across Shiro’s wrist, scarlet writing framed by purple stars. Shiro’s head snaps up, and Keith slowly looks down to where his hand rests palm down on the floor. He lifts his wrist into his lap, and peels back his sleeve slowly.  
  
It’s there on his wrist, bumpy from the scar tissue it’s risen through. Shiro’s handwriting in bright purple with red stars scattered around it.  
  
**_It’s good to be back._**  
  
Keith pushes himself to his feet and stumbles toward Shiro, eyes clouding with tears and not moving from his wrist until he’s close enough to look straight into Shiro’s. He throws his arms around Shiro’s neck at the same time that Shiro’s wrap around his waist, picking him up and spinning him around, their teary laughter echoing up and down the empty hall.  
  
~~~  
  
_(“I told you I’d always come back to you flyboy.”_ _  
__  
__Keith curls further into Shiro, rubbing his thumb over the scarlet lettering on his soulmate’s wrist, and thinks about sim runs and missions and voices in the desert. He thinks about Voltron and Lions, about finding each other across the universe and promises of “As many times as it takes.” issued to the wrong people but meant nonetheless. Keith thinks about the ring in Shiro’s drawer that he thinks Keith doesn’t know about._ _  
__  
__“Yeah. You did.”)_

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> Every comment is thoroughly cherished!
> 
> My Tumblr is The-Little-Red-Queen if anyone would like to join me in screaming about The Boys.


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